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The Winemakers

John Ashbery

It wasn’t meant to stand for what it stood for.Only a puptent could do that. Besides, we were in a statecalled New York, where only bees made sense.

Those who were with us were not with usand deserved a spanking. Others, looking outover the bay’s mild waters could barely distinguisha message made of logs: ‘Return to the frontieror all is lost, though in time some may reapthe benefit and glory of a frozen attitude.’My mind was made up.We would start for Illinois that very day.

Have you considered firecrackers?The deft music contained thereinassuages all contenders. Those who arrive lastat the party receive the most intelligent doorprizes.My niece is in Nepal. My name was memorisedlast week for the chilling rolls to come,in which footsoldiers gasp, giggle and dream.Say this for warmer climes, though:Bears are let out at night to patrol the streets.In the morning hope flushes the city anew.I guess it was just that I always thought of snowat the wrong times and defeatism came charging through the barricades.It always knew where to find me.

Funny, few can now remember how watercame in pails once, and sails were freefor anyone who needed them for a boat.Besides this six different types of studentwere always shackled to the end of the wharfin case anybody could use them for anything.I think there’s a wind maskout near the glue factory. So many kinds of hopebegan the race. Some morphed into local interestalong the way; others discharged family and civic responsibilities.Each of us was assigned a particular task, though nonerealised it until the task was accomplishedand forgotten. The brouhaha of learning didn’tseem to affect some any more than it did their teachers,by now asleep. Night was soft for that sort of thing.

You remember the one, the little electrical villages down the road.I’ll have a mustard coke. In ordinary times a store can find that.Ah, but we live in a peculiar era.You can’t get from there to here.Well, now it’s something I’d be happy to write about.It lands on your roof, a small package,loved and warmed. For all your posturing you’d say so too,I’d wager. Well, that’s enough of that now.Better stack our hats in the cloud chamber.

Her magical bracelet opened suddenlyas though it were Christmas. We’d better be getting alongbefore it gets dark, or there’s no way out of the box.They don’t carry them any more, besides whichthere’s not much interest, only songs of the nightand fruits so beautifully presentedyou’d swear you were in Asia the time beforethis one, whatever it is, or where wefetched up in the last century, the recent oneI mean. Like a dance, it completed itselfand ran out. Hey, it was just here!

So it is with the things that were more or lessdear to us and are now enfolded in the dreamof their happening. A man comes to the end of the drive,looks around. No one sees him. He puttersand in the end is the last to leave. We may write about him,or how his walk affected us. There he goesagain. If tact is a mortal sinwe shall not miss.